INGREDIENTS
For the salad:
1 iceberg or cos lettuce
2-4 rashers streaky bacon, cut into pieces
2 slices day-old sourdough or ciabatta bread, cut into small croutons
1 small red onion, finely sliced
100g blue cheese, roughly crumbled
150g tub Bee lane cold smoked tomatoes, drained (save the oil for other use)
2 Tb red wine vinegar
For the dressing:
60g blue cheese
½ cup buttermilk
½ cup mayonnaise
½ cup plain yoghurt
1 Tb white wine vinegar
INSTRUCTIONS
For the dressing:
- Place all the dressing ingredients into a bowl and blitz with a stick blender until smooth. Alternatively, mash the blue cheese with a fork and whisk in the other ingredients to form a slightly chunkier dressing.
- Season to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Note: depending on the saltiness of your blue cheese you may not need much (if any) salt.
For the salad:
- Cook the bacon rashers in a medium-sized frying pan until crispy. Remove and set aside.
- In the same pan, toss the bread pieces in the rendered bacon fat and cook on a low heat, stirring frequently until they are crunchy and golden. Drain on some crumpled kitchen towel.
- In a small bowl, lightly pickle the sliced red onion in the red wine vinegar
- Cut the lettuce into wedges – leaving some of the stalk on to keep the wedge intact.
To serve:
- Drain the pickled red onion slices.
- Arrange the lettuce wedges on a serving platter and scatter over the cooked bacon pieces, crunchy croutons, pickled red onion, crumbled blue cheese, and cold smoked tomatoes.
- Drizzle over some of the blue cheese dressing and serve the rest separately.
Vegetarian alternative: omit the bacon and cook your croutons in some olive oil instead.
Gluten-Free alternative: substitute sourdough or ciabatta with gluten-free bread of your choice.